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My Thoughts on Story 026 – “The Savages”

So I just realized, as I was sitting down to watch “The War Machines”, that I hadn’t written up my thoughts on this story yet. Whoops.

A defense mechanism, perhaps.

This wasn’t a good story. There wasn’t anything good about it. It wasn’t even bad enough to be entertaining. Mostly it was just a dull, boring slog. It’s another one that might be better if it were intact or animated, instead of in reconstruction form, but maybe not. Maybe it just always sucked.

The story doesn’t make much sense, and is rife with cliches. A distant planet with only one city (check), and two groups of people; one civilized and the other savage (check). The civilized ones are harming the savage ones (check), by stealing their “totally not souls” in order to survive (check). In the end, the Doctor saves the day, and Steven remains behind to become their great white king (colonialism check!). None of this is well-executed.

I really disliked this story. I can’t actually think of anything really good to stay about it, other than that it was short. At only four episodes, it didn’t do too much damage to my psyche. Still, I was displeased.